Eating this ‘dinosaur egg’-garnished dessert will blow your mind in five different ways

The western suburb of Altona isn’t the first place you’d expect to be treated to an artisan salt that has been certified by UNESCO as an “intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding”. But here we are, at cheery, two-level Filipino restaurant Kumbira, having asin tibuok grated over dessert. My mind is blown in about five different ways.

Asin tibuok (“whole salt”) looks like nothing else. Often described as dinosaur-egg salt, a smooth, white orb appears to be bursting from a remnant clay pot at its base. It’s crafted on the island of Bohol in a laborious, months-long process that involves sea water-soaked coconut husks that are burnt to ash, then sodden and strained to create a brine that’s poured into pots suspended over fire. Eventually, the salty water within evaporates, leaving solid, bulbous salt lumps which, when grated, distil sea, fire and land into one tasty sprinkle. It makes Saxa look pretty boring.

Jose Miguel Lontoc, a chef of 30 years standing, showers this salt over a dessert he calls “tamarind four ways”. Sticky tamarind pudding is cooked in a star-shaped mould normally used for the Filipino brioche known as ensaymada. The pudding is garnished with candied tamarind, tamarind caramel and tamarind ice-cream. Shaving salt atop is a gesture to a sweet-salty tamarind candy popular in the Philippines. It’s a creative rethinking of Filipino food for modern Melbourne, tapping into Pinoy nostalgia and broadening the welcome to Aussies of all stripes.

Chef Lontoc has cooked in five-star hotels all over the Philippines and in Australian venues as diverse as an Argentinian grill, an Italian winery and a tapas bar; he knows his stuff. Key dishes include the lechon, pull-apart roast pork (with sublimely shatter-crisp crackling) that’s flavoured with lemongrass and ginger and served with liver sauce and vinegar.

Chicken adobo, a stew, is given French-bistro treatment; stuffed into pots like rillettes, it’s topped with spiced butter and served with pandesal, the soft bread rolls that make Filipinos swoon. (At brekkie, this dish is reworked as a fusion eggs benedict with pandesal, adobo, poached egg and chicken-skin crisps.) Chicken also stars in the inasal skewers, an upsized street snack basted with spiced chicken oil.

Longanisa is the Pinoy version of chorizo. Kumbira’s paprika-rich sausage mix becomes the meat element in a Scotch egg: it’s fun, smart and tasty.

Kumbira opened last August, the first restaurant from Archie and Rene Manuel and business partner Arnold Espinoza. Rene’s single mum brought up six children in Cebu while running an eatery: it’s long been Rene’s dream to carry the torch in Melbourne. In Cebu, kumbira means feast and suggests family togetherness. It’s apt: the warmth and generosity here is humbling.

“We’re not related to our customers by blood, but, in our heart, it’s the same feeling,” Archie tells me. The overspilling hospitality is as precious as any object of cultural heritage, intangible only until you walk through these doors.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine.

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